Dear CNET, you are why my iMac is now all slimy:
The museum building, designed by Roman Delugan from Delugan Meissl Associated Architects in Vienna, Austria, touches the ground at only three points and so appears to be floating.
Category: Design
The Simple Things
A friend of mine reminded me of the Lynx text web browser tonight. Here’s a blurb from the download page:
Lynx has become quite popular as a “Universal Access” web browser for the Visually handicapped. Though Lynx is limited as it does not support JavaScript. Lynx was originally developed at the University of Kansas. In 1995 Lynx 2.4.2 was released under the GNU Public License by UKansas, since then it has been maintained and extended by a group of volunteers. This is the latest version, and has been compiled into an OS X package.
‘While You Were Out’
The New York Times has posted a slick little feature on the effect of Jobs on Apple, and they echo the point I made the other day:
Apple came up with some amazing products without Jobs, and will do so after he is long gone, but they have to keep the product line clean and clear.
The feature highlights a fact that I had forgotten: In 1993 alone, Apple releases 19 new machines. Here’s a bit from the Times in 1993:
Ars Technica Rolls Out Version 5
Ars Technica has updated their look, their background software and hardware, ad placement and more as of this morning:
We also knew that we needed to slim our pages down quite a bit. Our old design was image heavy thanks to all the rounded corners and polish. With the new site, the preponderance of images we do serve will be associated with stories, and not the design. And thanks to increased CPU overhead again, we can gzip our content before serving it to you. All in all, Ars is lighter and faster than before. You can’t appreciate the full effects just yet, because we have tweaking to do now that the site is live, but hopefully you can already tell the difference.
More on Taskbar vs. Dock
Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is. Concerns that Microsoft is making Windows too much like Mac OS X are not founded on any real evidence; the similarity is at most skin-deep.
That said, it’s not impossible to see a future where Windows also uses the same concept of the document being the window, ending the peculiar document-less windows we see today in Word and other software. It could do this by using the same approach as Messenger already uses in Windows 7; retain the Taskbar icon even when the last window is closed. In conjunction with a few extra window management operations (the ability to bring all windows of a particular application to the front, for example), Windows could offer the best of both worlds: the document-centric UI of Mac OS X, with its neatly orthogonal application and document switching, and document windows free from the constraints of their application, combined with the rapid window switching and management of the Taskbar.
A Look at Windows 7’s New Taskbar
The biggest UI change in the upcoming, still-in-beta Windows 7 is the system’s new taskbar.
Up until Windows 7 showed up, the taskbar was not much more than a way to manage open windows and applications. But with the new OS, the taskbar is now an application launcher. True, the old Windows taskbar could hold shortcuts to apps, but it was nothing like the Dock - the whole “mini-launcher” section was kinda janky. The Mac’s Dock was a far better application launcher - allowing users to place their favorite apps at the bottom or side of their display for quick access.
25 Years of Mac Ads
Computerworld has posted collection of Apple ads over the last 25 years. Highlights include Get a Macintosh, Lifesavers, and Super Computer.
Failures include Lemmings, and John Sculley’s open letter . Lemmings makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry under the bed.
Ellen Feiss still remains outside all categories - the whole thing is just plain weird.
I had not seen several of these, and had never seen the phrase “ The power to be your best.” Some classics though - like the Intel Bunny and the Intel Snail are missing from the list - as are the first iPod ad and the HAL commercial.
WhiteHouse.gov, Then and Now
Comparing the two makes it perfectly clear just how much has changed since 2001, and what we hope will come tomorrow: Flash, blogs, bigger monitors and broadband internet.
Tweetie Gets Nice Batch of Updates
For a long time, Twitterific was top dog on the Mac and on the iPhone when it came to Twitter clients - and rightfully so. It’s interface is clean and simple, putting regular tweets, replies and direct messages all in the same list. This simplicity is a much-appreciated design element, especially on the iPhone’s touch screen. The Iconfactory (the makers of Twitterific and some other great apps) did one thing that was ingenious - they offered a free, ad-supported version, and a “premium” version without the ads. This model worked for them on the Mac, and they elegantly brought it to the App Store before most others had figured it out.
Oh Yes, It’s a Real Product
Microsoft has announced Songsmith, a Windows app that creates music based on what you sing into a microphone. Honestly, it sounds pretty cool, and it’s not something Apple’s Garageband can do (that I know of), but the implementation is down right sad. The interface makes my eyes bleed, but the ad is even worse:
An Inside Look at FEX’s Icon
As you can see, the Linotype L logo was common theme to all ideas, some more subtle than others.
Really beautiful stuff, from start to finish.
The Salvation of Palm
Palm announced their new phone, the Pré, today. Engadget has posted some videos of the OS in action, and frankly, it is stunning. Palm’s “WebOS” is beautiful and chock-full of silky transitions. It makes my iPhone feel clunky.